In this series of articles I will be explaining all about social media and its implications for business as well as how you can start taking advantage of it if it is appropriate for your business. Before I get into the detail, lets take a few steps back and understand how it came about.

The first generation of the internet in broad terms was broadcast. I create a website and you look at it. You can send me an email or fill in a form which will do something. You could towards the end of this generation buy things through e-commerce.You can see the previous generation of webmozaic here

This is where a lot of websites still are and probably will be for the foreseeable future. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

The second generation of the internet or ‘web 2.0′ as it has been known is where website visitors can interact with websites. That is where this site is. For example. if you wish to comment on this article or ask me a question, you can and other people can comment on your comments. You do this directly on the page you’re looking at.

The ultimate example of this social aspect to the web is probably Facebook which for good or ill is about as social as you can get on the web. We’ll talk about Facebook in later articles.

Can business use social media?
Yes. There are many area where social media can help a business both in terms of sales, support as well as helping companies to interract with their customers in a way that has never been possible before. One issue that many businesses have is with engagement, the customers just don’t get excited about the products. Social media can help. Your customers may not get excited about the products, but how about what the products allow them to do?

Should every business use social media?
No. It isn’t appropriate for everyone. To do it ‘properly’ takes commitment, and resources, some cash and certainly time. It maybe that you just don’t have enough to say, or that you are very much business-to-business.